The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon

Hey look, we have a blog! Yes, Gianna and I are still alive. In fact, today is Gianna's birthday, so you should call her and comment upon her extreme advanced age. She loves that. Our bloggy negligence doesn't mean we haven't been reading, though, and what better way to dive back into blogginess than with a book about books and language?

Alena Graedon

The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon is a fun, creepy, innovative, and brilliantly composed novel that champions the value of language in an ever more digital world. If you read Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore or Ella Minnow Pea, here's a book for you. It's also a book for fans of Margaret Atwood's dystopian cautionary tales and nerds who lust after copies of the Oxford English Dictionary. If you're the nerdy type who makes a point of visiting bookstores and libraries on vacation, here you go.

It's the not too distant future, and bookstores, magazines, newspapers, and print are all a thing of the past. A smart phone, the Meme, has cornered the market and acts as the personal assistant to just about everyone on the planet. Can't remember a word? Look it up on the Word Exchange, an app that allows you to access the language you forgot (for a small fee). Anana Johnson, the protagonist, works at one of the few remaining publishers in the world, and along with her father Doug, is helping to assemble the new edition of the North American Dictionary of the English Language (NADEL). Anana is more a character from Girls than a word aficionado, but she needed a job and Doug was willing to hire her. On the eve of the publication, though, Doug disappears, Anana's ex boyfriend launches a new Meme device that taps directly into users' brains, and a strange virus, the Word Flu, begins to infect the population of New York and then the world.

What is the Word Flu? Imagin lettrs begin to fal off of words, but you can't rememb how the wrds used to look. Imagin that nonsense wrds start to replace the arla wrds and you're not sure what the arla wrds mean. No prblm. You can access the Word Exchange to lk up the wrds and even add defintitititions for wrds never used befffffore. Never mind that some people are dying from the flu, and most lose the ability to communicate entirely before they recover, IF they recover.

Did you know that New York was once connected by
pneumatic tubes that delivered messages around the city?
This is so much cooler than text messaging.

The best part of The Word Exchange is Alena Graedon's writing. Sure, the story is engaging and it's a literary mystery/quest novel that emphasizes the importance of books and language. It's a story that races from secret libraries to hidden rooms across New York, and it plays up cool, steampunk stuff like the pneumatic tubes connecting buildings underneath the city. But Graedon knows how to play with words and as the Word Flu spreads, so too does the virus infect the narrative. This is a fun read for smart people that takes advantage of clever tricks without losing the power of the story or characters. The writing is terrific and adds gravitas to the cautionary adventure tale Graedon is spinning.

Good and Cheap (Books)! Day 14

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn is a book I find myself recommending to readers who are looking for a light, fun, and somewhat thought-provoking book. Personally, I think of this book as pure fun and would actually use the word ‘delightful,’ and you know, I don’t ever really use that word, except to describe Liz.

The novel takes place on Nollop, an island of the coast of California. Nollop is the hometown to the man who created the famous pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” and those very words are inscribed on a statue in the center of town. (A pangram is a sentence containing all twenty-six letters of the alphabet.) This little country is very serious about their claim to fame, so when letters begin falling off the statue, the government thinks that it must be a sign that those particular letters should not be used. They in fact outlaw each letter that falls from the statue. Citizens are not permitted to speak or write outlawed letters. As government digs its heels in and begins handing out penalties for citizens found using outlawed letters, citizens scramble to find a way to appease the government by finding a new pangram.

While that’s a great plot for a novel in and of itself, Mark Dunn does something cool and for me, was the selling point hands down. As each letter is outlawed, he omits the letter from the novel. So when the letter J falls off for example, you won’t see it in the letters again. Toward the end of the book only a few letters remain….

The book is fun start to finish.